Jigsaws Wot I've Done

warning, new jigsaw on its way....

2011-08-24T02:01:00.001-07:00

fair warning, I'm close to starting a 750-piece jigsaw in 2011, more details as the pieces fall into place around the border...

:)

Nathan puzzle - two kittens in a buttercup field

2009-08-07T07:46:00.000-07:00

thousand pieces, with infectious help from Chad who was visiting; easy.

:)

jigsawer's block:

2007-03-14T13:50:00.000-07:00

is there such a condition?
or can we just put it down to laziness?
remember that BBC 'birds in the sky' jigsaw I started (however many weeks back)?
well, it's still on the table, about a 1/4 finished ... and looking like inspiration is ground down to zero. Chances of me finishing this rubbish project before I'm 50 years old? Limited (edition).

:)

BBC Planet Earth 8-in-1 deluxe jigsaw pack:

2006-12-29T02:31:00.000-08:00

it appears a chimera (no pun intended) has made its way into my Xmas stocking. This thing (above) the BBC Planet Earth 8-in-1 deluxe jigsaw pack. I can't find it on the BBC store. I can't find any piccies of it on the net in any of the usual jigsaw retailers. I mean, what the f*** have I received for Xmas? 8 puzzles in total, four 500-piece, four 750 piece. Nothing too taxing then. Might be worth framing them or something. Should be fun no matter what.

Deluxe Falcon Puzzle: Springtime

2006-12-15T00:08:00.000-08:00

it was only 500 pieces - the other one I found at the same table sale in fact. I looked at the box art and thought it would be a really hard one - it's basically a big formal springtime garden laid out with row upon row of brigiht flowers, a woody background. But it wasn't. It was over faster than the Vermeer one. I couldn't find a picture of it on the net and the box wouldn't fit on my scanner, so I'll just scan in a couple pieces from the bottom-right corner, not that this shows anything. It's just because I can.

Waddington's YOUNG LADY SEATED AT A VIRGINAL:

2006-12-09T12:27:00.000-08:00

It's a real nice painting by Vermeer.

The interesting point is I found this on a table sale, locally. It's only 500 pieces, so it's no great mountain to climb. But it's a truly beautiful puzzle in both design and construction. It's a circular puzzle, which is so sweet. And all the pieces are totally unique in shape - one of the things that was truly beginning to grind on my nerves with all the Ravensburger jigsaws I'd done was the similarity of the pieces - it's really boring after three, four, five puzzles. This one took about a day to complete. It's a classy little corker.

The French Jigsaw:

2006-08-26T01:43:00.000-07:00

while I was away in France, my daughter and I did this cute little jigsaw - I'll report more on it later once I get the details of it from the family, it was real cute.

:)

Waddington's SWANS & CYGNETS:

2006-07-18T11:40:00.000-07:00

I am trapped in the purgatory of the most difficult jigsaw in the world...

so what was so hard about it? It's really weird. It took me like 3 weeks to fully understand what was going on. I could see how the colours matched and where the blocks of colour should work. But a) there were very few lines to help find connecting strings and b) the design of the pieced was totally random.

Let me try to explain: usually, each jigsaw piece is cut via a square-ish grid. This way you can look ahead and see what sort of size of piece you might also be looking for - there are loads of helpful tile aids. But this one - it was only 350 pieces - was soooooo challenging because the pieces weren't cut on a grid and the lines of the tile overlapped. You'd have what looked like a tall thin part-piece that sat next to a really large wide piece. And on it went...

I'm just a jigsaw whiner though - it's done. Lesson learned.

:)

2002 W.H. Smith, LUCKY MARBLES:

2006-05-20T06:33:00.000-07:00

Saturday: a new jigsaw
This is a fairly big one this time round, both the post and the jigsaw - Lucky Marbles was one of seven special jigsaws published exclusively by W.H.Smith. Rather than pay some large toy corporation £10 for it, I paid £2.99 in the Abingdon Oxfam - all for a good cause. 1,500 pieces and I've not even started it yet as tonight is Eurovision Night. Thought you needed to be taken through the whole painful ordeal or starting, struggling with, then finishing a biggee. Hope it fits on my coffee table. Here's the delightful cover image, as it's an old jigsaw so this is the largest image I could find on the 'net.

Sunday: the nightmare begins.
The morning after the Eurovision before. I don't even know who won - we got to the bit where all the telephone votes had been counted and we thought 'how can they stretch this out to another hour?' and then they insisted on that worthless tradition of getting EACH COUNTRY to spell out their score 10-0. Who won? Don't care. The Croatia entry was great.
Anyway, I'm putting off the inevitable. Got all the edges done this morning. Did the jigsaw fit on the coffee table? You'll bet your life it didn't. I'll have to cludge together some sort of contingency plan. Stay tuned...

Monday: the journey begins
Silver-backed wrapping paper left over from Xmas or a birthday. That was the solution. A length of that hardy stuff rolled out on the floor, ample space. I've now got the edge done, and some details; the yellow barrel/red legs front and centre; the girl's blue dotted dress bottom right; the signage and wrapping paper top left; most of the basket of fruit tucked away in the bottom left corner. Destination centre of the jigsaw. Wish me luck.

Tuesday week later: nearly there
Yeah, the jigsaw. Fear not, my perverse blog reader, my intention was not to neglect you. It's just... well. That's how jigsaws are. You just add piece to piece to piece until the picture is complete. I have about 1,000 pieces arranged now, with about 500 pieces to fit in. And that's it. I'll let you know when it's done. Hopefully, real life trauma won't get in the way before then.

Three weeks to the day since the nightmare began:
And what a nightmare jigsaw it's been. All sorts of muted colours, not too many lines to guide the jigsawing eye. Very glossy puzzle, too. Made it hard to see the subtle transitions of gloomy tones. But screw all'a that rhetoric. It's over!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:)

Ravensburg speed jigsawing, 2-IN-A-BOX

2006-05-06T08:45:00.000-07:00

As the weather was so dull, wet and generally miserable today, my nine year old daughter Madeline and I decided that a nice break from her mammoth Harry Potter books weekends (The Prisoner of Azhkaban is book three, right?) would be a bit of speed jigsawing on one we'd done a couple times already.

Yep, that's it. Ravensburg's JIGSAW MAPS 2-in-a-box. There are (as it says on the cover) 2 jigsaws in the box. The first one, MAP OF EUROPE (100 pieces), we managed to polish off in a mere ten minutes. The other one, MAP OF BRITISH ISLES (200 pieces) took substantially longer; forty minutes. I know these are not world records. And I know it's only a bit of fun. But my geography has improved quite a bit since I got interested in jigsaws.

Ravensburger, POLITICAL WORLD MAP

2006-04-16T03:00:00.000-07:00

At the time of writing, this beauty fell outside the remit of Jigsaws Wot I've Done in that I had all the edge pieces, and I'd just done the inner frame (the outline of the globe) with all that lovely grey stuff. I'm really enjoying this one. I think I'd really get a kick out of a Mark Rothko one.

update: what a great Easter weekend. Friday, spent recovering from my Thursday-night-out with the lads. Saturday, 12 mile walk in the New Forest with my family, Brockenhurst-Lyndhurst-Brockenhurst + picnic. Sunday, ten miles around Wytham Woods + picnic with the family -- in the evening accepted/rejected stories from the second batch of Chimeraworld #4 submissions. Monday, today, finally got this jigsaw finished. It's not a world record but I did finish it in 3 days and I found out where the Galapogas Islands live. Nice.

Schmidt, LITTLE CAT

2006-04-15T12:41:00.000-07:00

This is a jigsaw I remember doing last year. It wasn't my fault. It was (again) my daughter's fault. We got her this 1,000 piece Schmidt jigsaw called PETITE CHATTE (Little Cat) and (again) she found all the edge pieces and put them together. She did really well and I didn't help her at all. Then I put together the remaining 8-900 or so pieces. It was fun though, quite a challenge all that fur and stuff.

Ravensburger, HARLECH CASTLE

2006-04-09T11:30:00.000-07:00

Bricks, bricks, bricks and more bricks. This 1,000 piece beauty is a photo of Harlech Castle (interesting trivia moment: Harlech Castle was just down the road from where we just spent a lovely 4 days in the Snowdonia National Park, a place called Bryn Elltyd @ Blaenau Ffestiniog). Here it is, another Ravensburger Jigsaws classic.

Ravensburger, DISNEY PRINCESSES

2006-04-09T11:02:00.000-07:00

The first of a few 1,000 piece Ravensburger jigsaws I've done, this delightful Disney effort is called Disney Princesses 'cos it has all the princesses from the disney films in it. I say I've done but it was really for my little daughter and I to do as a shared thing. Honest. But she got bored with it just about after the edge was all complete. Honest.

And anyway, the change of style from the previous (photographic) ones to the primary colour cartoony ones added an extra challenge. You're scared now, aren't you?

:)

2009 Update: three years later and I've jsut redone this jigsaw ... in preparation for a redoing of the amazingly difficult Napoleon Crossing The Alps.

NAPOLEON CROSSING THE ALPS

2006-04-09T09:00:00.000-07:00

1,500 pieces - this was one I found in a local charity shop about a year ago (and it felt like it took that long to complete). Anyway, if you're still awake, here's the box cover (well an image of the jigsaw on the 'net)

This is one I'd like to do again, just for the mental challenge of all that sky.

EXQUISITE CREATURES, Insect Art by Christopher Marley

2006-04-09T08:52:00.000-07:00

1,000 piece jigsaw mania once again grasped me by the throat and crushed my windpipe until I went blue and (nearly) died from completion anxiety. This episode of jigsawing madness is titled EXQUISITE CREATURES (Insect Art by Christopher Marley - image below).

This is sort of an (edited) update as I posted the original entry a week back - why the update? Well, it was all going (annoyingly) well. If you look closely at the image, you'll see that the majority of heads are completely different colours from the bodies, making this one of the most difficult 1,000 piecers I've ever attempted. I was a mere 50 pieces from completing this (maddening) puzzle. I return from work today to find the my wife and daughter have FINISHED IT FOR ME.

Gutted.

L.O.L.